Tag: Romantic Novelists’ Association

Hi, Martin, and welcome back. It was great to meet up again and congratulations on becoming the Chair of the CWA.

Thanks, Val. It was a pleasure to spend time in your company at the CWA’s enjoyable annual conference in Edinburgh recently. You know from your own experience that the CWA is a vigorous and highly collegiate organisation. For me, it’s a huge honour to be elected Chair.

The CWA keeps growing – it now has more members than ever before in its 64 year history. Although most are British writers, we have an increasing number of members based overseas, plus corporate and associate members involved in many different ways with the business of crime writing. We also prize non-fiction crime writing – a CWA Gold Dagger is awarded each year for the best factual book as well as for the best novel.

So the CWA is a very broad church. That makes it a vibrant organisation, but it also presents challenges. How can we make sure that we deliver value to all our members? That has to be our central aim. It’s not the committee’s organisation, far less my own. It belongs to the whole of the membership. And that’s something I keep at the forefront of my mind.

At present, for instance, self-published writers are not eligible for membership. The writing business is changing rapidly, and my personal view is that our eligibility criteria will change too. But this will only happen when there’s a clear consensus in favour on the part of the membership – it’s not a decision that can or should be imposed.

Already, we do a great deal for our members. If you take a look at the membership benefits on our website, you’ll find that there are very wide-ranging, and rarely matched by comparable groups. Our regional chapters offer an eclectic mix of social and professional activities; each chapter operates with a high level of autonomy, which is the way our members like it. As well as social media platforms, we run the Crime Readers’ Association, with its monthly newsletter going to over 10,000 subscribers. The bi-monthly Case Files has a similar readership. Our members have exclusive access, therefore, to a key target audience, an audience that is expanding all the time.

But I want us to keep growing, and to offer our members even more. My belief is that the CWA’s potential is almost limitless. Crime writing is, after all, enormously popular worldwide, and few “brands” within the genre can match the prestige of the CWA, and of our internationally renowned Dagger awards.

Let me mention just a few of the areas that I’d like us to explore in the coming years – not just while I’m Chair, but on a continuing basis. Our links with libraries are very important, and mutually beneficial. The CWA Dagger in the Library is a popular award, and our National Crime Reading Month links writers, readers, and libraries each June. I’ve just appointed our first Libraries Champion, Ruth Dudley Edwards, who will develop those links further, to everyone’s benefit.

And there’s much more – too much for one blog post! But I’d like to highlight the valuable work we do for the public benefit, not least encouraging the next generation of writers via the exceptionally successful CWA Debut Dagger, and also a flash fiction competition for students at the Edinburgh conference. This is another area of our activities that I’d love to expand.

I’m also proud that our archives are a central part of the British crime writing archives now held at Gladstone’s Library. Over time, I hope this will become an internationally recognised resource for researchers and crime fans. The archives are being opened officially at a week-end event in June, Alibis in the Archive, which quickly sold out – surely a sign we are doing something right. In fact, the tremendous level of interest means that we’ve already agreed to run another Alibis next year.

Of course, there are constraints. Our resources are limited, and so – crucially – is the time of committee members who are unpaid volunteers. We can’t do everything we’d like to do, and we will never be able to please everyone – no organisation can. We need to build up our management infrastructure, and operate as professionally as possible, so that our worthy aims can be implemented efficiently and over the long term. Making sure that all this happens in a sound way cannot be achieved overnight. But the portents are good. The future of the CWA promises to be even more exciting than its prestigious past.

Martin Edwards’ eighteen novels include the Lake District Mysteries and the Harry Devlin series, and The Golden Age of Murder won the Edgar, Agatha, H.R.F. Keating and Macavity awards. He has edited thirty crime anthologies, and won the CWA Short Story Dagger, CWA Margery Allingham Prize, and the Poirot Award. He is series consultant for the British Library’s Crime Classics, President of the Detection Club, and Chair of the Crime Writers’ Association. His The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books appears in July.

Your first interview was back in 2013. So what exciting things have happened since then?

When you asked me, just before Christmas, if I’d like to do this update, I seem to remember silently screaming, No, go away, can’t cope with this, or something along those lines. Basically I was in festive meltdown – organising kids, grandparents, husband etc. – and didn’t want to have to think about work. After I calmed myself down and messaged you back, you kindly reassured me I could leave it until after January.

So here I am, revisiting my old self from a few years back, remembering what goals she set and what she was planning writing-wise. I’m satisfied that she appears to have achieved her aims, and of course, she’s set some new ones since then, too.

(I’ll slide firmly into first person POV now, so I don’t sound any more pretentious than I have to.)

Firstly, ONCE UPON A WINTER, which had just come out before I was last here on Val’s blog, went on to top the Amazon UK Fairy Tale Chart in 2013 and at the last count had over sixty 5-star reviews. Understandably, I was thrilled about that, considering it was my first attempt at modern magical realism. The feedback from readers, both old and new, was encouraging.

Last time round, I also mentioned a short story I was contributing to the ‘Sunlounger’ anthology organised in 2013 by Belinda Jones. There was another one the following year, and I took part in that, too. My second tale, PANDORA AND THE MUSIC BOX, has also been a featured read on Wattpad. I hadn’t attempted a short story in years, but I valued the discipline of keeping to a strict, low word count.

As for the novella I spoke about last time, I actually ended up writing two that year. A GIRL I KNEW (formerly known as The Trouble With Knights in Shining Armour) and my Christmas themed THE LITTLE BOOK OF LOST HEARTS. The latter set the scene for the next full length work, FOUR SIDES TO EVERY STORY, which I have to admit is the favourite of my contemporary fairy tales so far. It was shortlisted in the 2015 Love Stories Awards and was a 5-star read of 2015 on Chat About Books.

Last year was a bit of a departure, though, as I started working on something different from anything I’d attempted before. I even invented a pen-name – a whole other person to hide behind, which was liberating. But as the year drew to a close, I realised I wasn’t happy. I missed my fairy tales. For reasons rooted in insecurity, I’d begun to think they weren’t ‘proper’ books, not worthy somehow, and could never stand alongside the amazing, emotive fiction being published today.

Then it all changed. FOUR SIDES TO EVERY STORY was listed as a top read for 2016 on Portobello Book Blog, along with a dozen other titles, many of which I’m in awe of. Out of the 140 or so novels Joanne (@portybelle) had read that year, mine had been memorable enough to hover in her top 10(ish). I felt touched, and very grateful. Something clicked in my fragile writer’s brain. A realisation. Just because I choose to weave reality – or our concept of it – with traces of magic, doesn’t mean my work isn’t of value, or unable to hold its own in a crowded market. If this were true, then why is it some of the most famous and enduring stories in our culture happen to be fairy tales, myths and parables? All through history, fiction has worked to make sense of the world around us, and often metaphors are the best way to do it.

So, when the kids went back to school at the start of this year, I dug out a notebook bursting with the plot for a sequel to FOUR SIDES TO EVERY STORY, and sat down as Valerie-Anne to begin this new project. And that’s what I’m working on right now. Oddly, it’s as liberating as having a pseudonym. I feel as if I’ve come home, having forgotten what a wonderful place it can be. I’m energised by my writing again, rather than drained, and excited to find out what 2017 holds for me.

Thank you, Val, for inviting me to return to your blog, to share an update. I’ve enjoyed looking back as well as forward, and come to the conclusion that it’s quite a healthy thing to do at this time of year. Maybe everyone should give it a go!

Exciting times for you, Val. I wish you every continued success in the future!

I am delighted to welcome Jan Jones as my guest this month. Jan is not only an amazing writer of romantic fiction but the organiser of many successful Romantic Novelists’ Association Conferences.

Hi Jan – thank you for taking the time out of your hectic schedule to complete the interview. This year’s conference at Lancaster University was, amazing, as usual. The speakers were from all sections of the industry. How have you seen the event change and grow since you became the organiser?

Hi Val,

Since 2005 when I took over as organiser, the conference has grown from just over a hundred residential delegates to over two hundred. We’ve also increased the number of choices, added extra Sunday afternoon sessions and offer a Thursday pre-conference arrival.

The Romantic Novelists’ Association is a very supportive organisation. When did you join it and make your first break into print?

I first joined during the 1980s when I was writing magazine stories, took a break, rejoined in 1994, then made the breakthrough from NWS to full in 2005.

Your career began in mathematics and computing, so when did you realise that you were a writer at heart?

Oh, I’ve always known that, but I also knew I wouldn’t be able to live on it. Computer programming was a much more bankable skill.

Do you prefer to write long or short fiction, YA or adult, historical or contemporary?

All of them. I have a dreadfully low boredom threshold. I like the variety and challenge of writing different forms and genres. As to length, I think when you first get the germ of an idea, you know what sort of size the story will be. When writing serials I have to squash the story into a few compact episodes, so it is an immense relief to then expand it to the length it always should have been and self-publish it.

Do you have a strict writing regime and work ethic?

Erm, no. I’d like to, but life keeps getting in the way. I just write whenever I can. Late at night is good, because everything is quiet and I don’t have the sense of having left chores undone. I try to only have one project on the go at one time, but I generally have two or three in various stages. There are very few points during the day when I’m not thinking about whatever the current piece of work is. The worst time for me is during RNA Conference preparations. I can’t keep a book in my head as well as all the conference arrangements, so I have to completely stop writing at the end of April and not pick the book up again until July. The upside is that by then, I’ve forgotten how much I hated it!

That is a long time for preparation. No wonder the conferences are such a success. What was the best piece of advice you were given as a new writer?

That everyone has something useful to teach you and that you never stop learning. What I worked out for myself was to believe in my own voice, to dare to be different, and to never give up.

What inspired The Penny Plain Mysteries?

I came across a strange jigsaw when I was clearing my mother’s bungalow that gave rise to the first Penny Plain story, but as for where the characters came from, I have no idea. I think all writers have people lying dormant in their subconscious, just waiting for the right setting.

What are you working on now?

I have recently got the rights back for the three Regency novels published by Hale, so I am revising them ready to self-publish. I am enjoying it tremendously – it’s just like meeting old friends and falling in love with them all over again.

I love that description. So what is next for Jan?

Keep on keeping on! At the last count I had something like nineteen projects waiting for my attention, ranging from finished novels to be done-something-with to tantalising germs of ideas with half-a-dozen lines of notes to anchor the thoughts in place.

Good luck and I wish you every success with them. Thanks for sharing some of your writing experience and world.